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My History with Aerial Photography

My adventures in aerial photography began when one of my brothers got his pilot license while I was in high school. We began doing some professional photography while having some fun flying small airplanes. That lasted about a year, and my interest in aerial photography became dormant for a few years until I bought my first quadcopter in 2013.

The quadcopter was a Blade mQX, which was an advanced little quadcopter for the price I paid at the time, but it didn’t come close to the quadcopters available now. I began doing some very basic aerial photography when I attached a 720p keychain camera to the quadcopter, which resulted in very simple video recordings:

That was enough to reinvigorate my interest in aerial photography. I began investigating how much it would cost to buy or build a decent aerial photography quadcopter. In the meantime, I began experimenting with the keychain camera on an RC airplane, which quickly resulted in this crash, which has been one of my most popular YouTube videos:

I continued to keep an eye on quadcopters (which people unaffectionately refer to as drones nowadays), waiting for features to develop that would make aerial photography easy and within my price range. That time came in April 2015 when DJI released the Phantom 3. I quickly placed a preorder, and on May 4th, I received my Phantom.

Receiving the Phantom 3 began a new chapter in my aerial photography. I quickly launched WisconsinAerial.com to create a public platform to share my aerial photos and aerial-infused videos like this one:

As a hobby, it’s hard to find time to consistenly post new content, but I hope to post at least one new photo shoot a week.

If you want to keep track of my aerial photography, you can follow me at the following sites: